


Why Encouraging Your Children's Special Interests Is A Valid Coping Mechanism : A Guide By Dib Membrane And Invader Zim

by PaleNoFace



Series: Smeet Army AU [1]
Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Author Is Strongly Projecting, Dib (Invader Zim) Needs Therapy, Dib Has Issues (Invader Zim), Domestic Disputes, Established Relationship, Eye Trauma, Family Feels, Gaz Being Gaz (Invader Zim), Idiots in Love, M/M, Oblivious Professor Membrane, Oh My God, Older Dib (Invader Zim), Parent Dib (Invader Zim), Parent Zim (Invader Zim), Tall Zim (Invader Zim), Zim Also Has Issues (Invader Zim), Zim Also Needs Therapy, am i projecting ?, dib and zim are also strongly projecting, i feel like i coded them all to be on the autistic spectrum, therefore they give the kids all the love and attention they've been denied, what are you expecting we're talking about dib and zim here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:06:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23335846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaleNoFace/pseuds/PaleNoFace
Summary: Gus takes great pride in his resemblance with Zim-Father. Artie knows better than to ask who's the favorite. Noods knows she's weird. (Dib and Zim are just trying their best, okay.)
Relationships: Dib (Invader Zim) & Original Character(s), Dib/Zim (Invader Zim), Gaz (Invader Zim) & Original Character(s), Zim (Invader Zim) & Original Character(s)
Series: Smeet Army AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658659
Comments: 22
Kudos: 147





	Why Encouraging Your Children's Special Interests Is A Valid Coping Mechanism : A Guide By Dib Membrane And Invader Zim

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go, a first taste of the local defective Smeets !

Gus takes great pride in his resemblance with Zim-Father.

It's such a weird thing to be proud of, he knows, but he can't help it. Zim-Father is _awesome_ , and he's glad to be just a little bit like him. He's tall and strong and loud, none of which Gus is, but he's also wicked smart and very fast, which Gus is very much.

Zim-Father also talks about himself at the third person sometimes, but Gus definitely doesn't do that, because that's just plain weird.

He's so small, Gus, ridiculously so, but so was Zim-Father for a long while, and Gus' PAK isn't stopping him from growing up, so that's a short-term problem really. He also has an eye that doesn't work, the right one, and it's kind of bothering him because it means there's a whole part of the room he can't see, which means Chicken Noodle can actually sneak up on him.

Which is very unfair, because Chicken Noodle is very very tall, and very heavy, and very scary. Not that Gus is scared ! Gus is scared of nothing. Except of Chicken Noodle.

Okay, yes, she is incredibly scary, and he feels like his spooch is trying to crawl out of him every time she spooks him.

The only good thing with his eye is that he actually matches Dib-Father. Not completely, because Dib-Father is actually missing his left eye, while Gus' defective one is the right one, but when they are face to face it's the same side, so it matches.

Zim-Father keeps saying that he's going to make them new eyes, but Dib-Father shrugs and says his can wait, and Gus knows it's gonna take at least until his first growth spurt before Zim-Father will do the operation.

...Gus is so damn small. It sucks so much.

Everything is great in his life, okay ? He has good parents that love him very much and teach him a lot, he lives in a good house, has a pretty good relationship with his siblings - except when Chicken Noodle goes feral. It's terrifying, and it happened only twice since Gus was born, but twice means it's possible, and it might happen again.

Being small also means being unable to fight back. Artie isn't much of an opponent, although a battle against him would be very hard to win because he's still a head taller than Gus and three times as heavy, and his PAK legs are sharp enough to break boulders in half. And Noodle is downright terrifying when angry. Or hungry. Or sleep-deprived.

Actually, scratch everything, Gus has a flaw : he's a big fat liar.

He is scared of so much shit. Nothing is sized for him in this world, and he has to be very careful all the time to not get stepped on or slammed into. At any given time, at any given place, there are roughly fifteen things that could hurt him.

That's why Zim-Father is so cool. Nothing scares him. Nothing seems to be too unexpected for him not to roll with it. Zim-Father is tall, smart, strong.

And somehow, Dib-father is taller, a little smarter, a little weaker. He's also very cool. He knows how to handle Chicken Noodle. Gus wishes he could do that.

And he knows, okay, that she isn't trying to actively kill him, that she just wants to play-fight, but Gus is so small and she is so not, and Gus is so glad he doesn't have a heart because he would have died of heart attack a long time ago.

He knows his parents are making an effort to adapt the base for him. He knows Artichoke isn't actively ignoring him, and he knows Noodle isn't out for blood whenever she sees him.

And he knows he's not worthless, okay, because Zim-Father thinks he's awesome and Zim-Father is rarely wrong, and hugs him and kisses him on the head and let him rest on his shoulder or on top of his PAK so Gus must be worth something, right ?

And Dib-Father holds him close when they watch TV and doesn't mind when he drowns the commentary by his own, and tells him how much he loves him and how important he is, and Dib-Father is very smart for a human, so it must mean something, right ?

And so what if he's tiny ! What if he's a scaredy-cat ? He's just a Smeet ! They all are ! They still have time to learn !

...Right ?

____________________________________________________________________________

Artie knows better than to ask who's the favorite.

He's young, but not stupid. He sees how Da's face lights up when Noods clings to him for warmth. He hears how delighted Pa sounds whenever Gus boasts about his latest hack.

It's fair. He's not jealous, he gets it. Honestly, he's fine with that.

Noods needs a lot of care and attention because she's not functional by herself. Gus is so much like Pa that it would be just weird for them not to get along. And Artie...

Artie is nothing like an Irken. Sure, he looks like one for all intents and purposes, with the green skin and the antennae and the PAK - but he doesn't have the blood-thirst, or the visceral need to explore, or anything that makes Irkens... Well. _Irkens_.

And it's okay. He's been quick to make peace with that. 

It's not like he's been neglected, either : both his parents make a point of listening to him when he speaks up, and hug him when he's not doing great, and make sure he knows how much they love him. He's very grateful for that.

They just don't love him as much as they love Noods and Gus.

And he gets it. It's fine. It doesn't bother him. He's made peace with that fact too, long ago.

But.

Often, not all the time, when Pa talks about how great it would be to finally destroy the Irken Empire, and Da goes on and on about how they're supposed to protect the Earth, because Earth is home and the people here are too dumb to protect themselves... Artie feels a little sad. A little hurt.

Because he doesn't get it. He doesn't get why it always has to be about battles and fights to the death. He doesn't understand why he can't just sit in a corner and look at cool rocks. He likes rocks. They don't require much attention. They don't talk. He's very happy with his rocks.

Da tries to be understanding. Tells him about all the cool rocks they could collect in space. But Artie is okay with keeping his feet on the ground. He doesn't need space to be happy.

Pa tries to coax him into different hobbies, while still encouraging him to collect samples. But everything else gets boring very fast, and Artie always goes back to poke at his own collection.

Even Auntie, who looks like she'd rather destroy Earth herself if anyone as much as sneeze in her games' general direction and therefore should understand how much passion he's putting into this, looks at his last finding with a confused squint when he shows it to her, but praises him anyway for finding a new good rock.

They're supportive, and really, Artie doesn't need more than that.

It's his special interest, and it's alright if they don't share it. He's glad they're not trying to force him to do something else - Hell, he's pretty sure they had to fight to keep their own interests free of any unwanted attention. (Da sure likes his cryptids a lot.)

And again, it's all good, he gets it - Noods likes bad martial arts movies and spicy food, that she shares with Da, and shooting stuff, to Pa's greatest joy, or goes completely apeshit over FPS with Auntie ; Gus is a genius hacker and gets merciless when he's pushed to use his PAK weapons, which makes Pa very happy, but he also likes to cuddle and watch Mysterious Mysteries with Da, and talk about robots with Auntie.

Artie is none of these things. He's not fan of martial arts, or spicy food, or shooting stuff, or video games, or hacking, nor is he good with his PAK, or a great cuddler, or a fan of Mysterious Mysteries, or robots.

What he likes is to jump in puddles after a great rain and try to avoid the deadly drops. What he likes is to go walk in forests with Da and listen to him explain how wild life hides out there, where there aren't any houses. What he likes is to sit in one of the labs and watch Pa make experiments.

What he likes... is when Grandpa opens the backdoor of his house and looks a little surprised to find him, covered in mud and a bag in his arms, but still invites him inside the kitchen and offers him some tea, and then looks at him sort all his rocks right on the kitchen table. He likes when Grandpa gushes over his ability to pick out different stones every time, and tells him all about geology.

Artie likes that _very very very much_.

He's fine with this life, and every now and then his parents reassure him, tell him how he doesn't have to be someone else for their sake, that they really just want him to be free and happy to do what he wants.

He knows they get it, but he also knows they will never quite understand why he's so tame for an Irken. He doesn't understand it either.

It's good enough for him.

____________________________________________________________________________

Noods knows she's weird.

It's not hard to see how different Mother and Father treat her from her brothers. Maybe it's because she's the first, and they have to be a little harder on her to set an example, or maybe it's because she's the strongest and she's still working on how to use her full potential without hurting anyone that doesn't deserve it, or...

Sometimes she watches them, Artie and Gus. She watches them and wonders why she's the odd one out. Wonders why she can't speak like them, or understand things like them, or, or...

She sleeps a lot. Sometimes if she's lucky Father lies down with her and it's good. He also needs sleep, but less than her, because he's all grown-up, and because he drinks way too much coffee. She hates coffee - it tastes bad and keeps Father from nesting with her.

She also eats a lot, because her body is full of muscles she uses when she's awake. She's always cold, and so Mother raises the heat in the base, but then Gus complains because it gives him headaches, so the heat goes back down, and Noods is forced into a second -or even third !- layer that makes moving more difficult, but at least keeps her warm.

And...

And she has a bad memory. She has a bad brain, she knows - or half a brain, Father had said at some point, but she's not sure what it means. She thinks it has to do with the PAK. She doesn't have one. Mother has one, and Mother is smarter than her, and can talk, and can fight better than she could ever wish to.

Artie and Gus have PAKs, too, and Artie is so soft and gentle and everyone loves him, and Gus is so very smart and fast, and she is none of these things.

Maybe if she had a PAK she would be.

Mother has tried to tell her, multiple times, why she's the way she is. But Mother uses complicated words that Noods' half-brain doesn't get, and she gets distracted half-way through the explanation and forgets. When it happens, Mother sighs, but doesn't insist.

Noods can't speak. She's tried, a lot, very often, to make the same sounds that come out of everyone's mouth. She tries so hard, but it comes out gargled, completely incomprehensible, even to her.

Not that she understood the words to begin with.

But what Noods lacks in brain smarts, she has in body smarts. She can tell what people are saying from the way they move, and their tone, and their attitude. She knows when Father is so pissed off at Mother that a fight is imminent, and it gives her time to run away to avoid to be on the list of collateral damage.

She knows that, when Gus starts babbling, it's to cover his nervousness. So she comes to sit next to him, not too close because she's very tall and he's very small and scared of her, even if he tries to look like nothing scares him- Anyway. She sits to make herself small, and she listens. She doesn't get what he says, but she knows what he means. And sometimes it's enough for him to forget that she can actually kill him if she isn't careful enough. When it happens, he even cuddles into her side.

She knows when Artie is upset, poking at his hoard of shiny and not-so-shiny things and trying to keep away from everyone, so she stands next to him and wait for him to tell her about his favorite rock, and maybe she doesn't get it, but Artie seems to appreciate that she tries to stay still while he talks, and Noods is trying _very very hard, okay_.

She's weird. She _knows_. It's not something she can change, because she doesn't have a PAK and at this point it could be dangerous to give her one, Father had said, and he looked sad, like it was somehow his fault.

Noods doesn't know why. She doesn't know a lot of stuff. She's not sure how the world works, and she's not sure how she works, either. She doesn't know why sometimes she feels like fighting everything until she drops dead, and why sometimes she feels like hiding in her nest and cry.

It's complicated, and hard, and she's still very small.

Often, she wonders if things would be different if she had a PAK.

But her bad brain is full of holes, and she forgets, and she goes back to wrestle Gus within an inch of his life.

(At least she's GIR's favorite. That must count for something, right ?)


End file.
